This is turning into the thread that will not die. But I have a question for those who have been following it so far:
After looking at gear ratios, I've decided that I want to set up my AW with a 27 and a 23 cog. With my 48 tooth chainring that gives me six nicely spaced gears for steep dirt roads--34.7, 40.7, 46.2, 54.3, 61.6 and 72.3, according to Sheldon Brown's internal hub gear calculator.
Standard 23-tooth cogs are available to fit the Sturmey-Archer hub, but for the 27-tooth cog my plan was to grind down the splines of a Shimano cassette cog to fit. I've done that successfully before (actually I use a half-round file, not a grinder).
Anyway, the Harris site seems to offer a suitable 27-tooth cog, which is handy since I plan to order the 23 from them also. Here's their description of the 27:
http://harriscyclery.net/page.cfm?Pa...ils&sku=FW1691
It's made by Miche and is said to be "Shimano compatible. Sounds promising, but the cog in the accompanying photo seems to show a spline pattern that's very different from the Shimano cassette cogs I've used before. Does anyone know what gives? Is the photo just wrong or misleading? Does the 27 only come with some sort of special Dura-Ace spline or something? Help! I don't want to have to buy it to find out whether it will work or not.
JV